


When Suddenly at Midnight

by reine_des_corbeaux



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Canon-Typical Doom and Gloom, Dark Magic, Drunken Kissing, Drunkenness, Dysfunctional Relationships, Fade to Black, M/M, Rituals Gone Wrong, Summoning Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, The Setting is Out to Get Us
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 05:11:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20465561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/pseuds/reine_des_corbeaux
Summary: The bacchanal has unintended consequences for the Hampden College Classical Magic department.





	When Suddenly at Midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liesmyth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/gifts).

He hadn’t felt so hollow since boarding, since they’d tried to scrape out everything inside him and remold his magic into something it was supposed to be but that he could not fathom. And here he was again, empty and scoured to his very soul, the connection to his powers severed and lost. 

_Where did we go wrong? _Francis asked the skeleton trees. _What sacrifice must we make to regain what we lost?_

The bare branches of the trees shook mockingly in the wind, the sky a bitter gray, the ground a scuffed, dirtied white. There hadn’t been fresh snow for days now, and spring was upon them, and Bunny knew, and Francis’s magic was a strange, untethered thing, alien in his own body. 

They’d all lost bits and pieces after that wild night, different parts of their magic scrubbed out of them or rearranged. Camilla had lost all capabilities but that of blood-magic, and Charles said he saw things sometimes, floating at the corner of his vision, and he numbed them out with drink. Only Henry seemed unchanged, simply more tired, more haggard, and Francis found himself wondering whether the ritual had taken the most from him. Wouldn’t that be hilarious, in a classical, ironic way, if they’d gone to all that trouble, twisted and perverted their bonds with their own gods, and thrown their magics into chaos, only for Henry’s bond to fail? 

_We summoned the mad god_, Francis thought. _We shouldn’t have done that. _

The wind whined dolefully in the naked trees. 

***

People didn’t come to Hampden College specifically for the classical magic program, unless they were Henry Winter. They stumbled into it unexpectedly, looking for something to cling to, an identity to form, and no one knew this better than Richard Papen, ex-premed student and unlikely classicist. He’d come to Hampden to recreate himself, and he’d found, in the calm of Julian Morrow’s office, a way to remove himself from the hideous ennui of suburban California. 

And yet. 

And yet, he was not satisfied. Magic grew within him, but it was a lumpy, vestigial thing, uncontrolled. It never soared and looped, or thrummed with some ancient, gnawing power for Richard the way it did for the others. He wondered if it would have been different if he’d started his college education at Hampden instead of in California, where magic was something at once aspirational and uncomfortably foreign, reeking of East Coast snobbery. 

Richard was one of them, one of the Hampden classics students, but he was not of them, and sometimes he wondered if he ever would be. They had their gods, and he had nothing, not even after spending a winter sacrificing himself to the cold in the hopes of bringing some god, any minor deity, really, into his body and channeling their magic. He’d even hoped for the goddess of the seasons herself as he shivered in the attic. But he’d gotten nothing but hypothermia in return for his careful sacrifice. He’d offered his life’s blood to Persephone, and the goddess had rejected him. 

In the hospital, he shook, and Henry watched him owlishly over his glasses. 

“You’re too weak for bonding your magic now,” he said. “It was the same for Francis when he chose, and for Charles as well. Camilla had an easier time of it, and, oddly enough, so did Bunny.” 

Richard said nothing. He couldn’t, because they could all channel their powers and he could not,. They all knew what they were doing, and he was alone. 

“Sacrifice,” Henry continued, “is sometimes necessary for power. Ideally, you don’t sacrifice yourself. You sacrifice something, or someone, else.” 

Suddenly, Richard, miserable though he was, wanted to listen. His head pounded, as though he’d cast too many spells or drank too much wine. 

***

After they rolled the corpse down the hill, they trooped back to campus in silent line. Francis could not shake the feeling that this had been no ritual, and only senseless, luckless murder. But soon, it would be spring. Maybe the sacrifice had given one of them back their powers, given them the choice to intercede on behalf of the other luckless summoners. But he was unsure, and his heart thundered wildly in his chest. He felt eyes on the back of his neck, but when he turned, he saw only the forest. 

*** 

They’d been practicing with Francis’s magic for the past hour, sitting in Richard’s room, confused and more than a little drunk. It had been, for the most part, entertaining, and in a pleasant state of intoxication, even the simplest magic went astray in amusing ways. So far, Francis had managed to shatter a glass of water and transform a perfectly good bottle of wine into grape soda. It wasn’t what he’d done in the halcyon days of yore, when he’d given the boat wings, and the six of them drank champagne from charmed bottles and glasses on the porch of the country house, but it was fun. Afraid though he was of his unbound magic when sober, drunkenness took the edge off. This was kid stuff, easy stuff, the first declension of magic. 

It was easy to forget the miserable reality like this, to forget that Bunny was dead. 

“Shall I get more wine?” Richard slurred, waving his hand vaguely in the direction of the door. 

A few yellow petals trailed vaguely from his fingertips, swirling like confetti in the air. Definitely magic-drunk, losing control little by little. No wonder the glass had shattered so brightly when they’d both tried the old boiling water trick at once. 

“I don’t see why not,” Francis said. 

If he’d been more sober, if they’d only been doing an assignment for Julian in one of the library reading rooms, he would have noticed his own inhibitions disintegrating sooner, and perhaps he would have cared. But he couldn’t care now, a magic-drunk murderer in a stuffy dorm room, acting on impulse alone. He leaned across the bed to Richard, still shedding petals from his fingers. They’d gone from yellow to an unnatural acid green. The air smelled of cut grass, champagne, and a pond stagnating under the summer sun. Francis turned towards Richard. 

“I’ll just be going,” Richard said, and Francis grabbed his wrist. 

“Stay for a bit,” he said, and then he kissed him. 

Richard’s mouth tasted like wine, mostly. Wine, and maybe the last remnants of gum or toothpaste or something else slightly minty. Maybe magic. He’d kissed Charles enough when they were both spell-drunk to know that spells had their own flavors. 

When they broke apart, Richard was breathing heavily, his pupils dilated, eyes wide. _More spell-drunk than I realized_, Francis thought a bit guiltily. But Richard smiled. 

“I’ll just go get the wine,” he said, and padded out the door still in his socks. 

Francis heard him weaving his way down the halls, the dorm oddly quiet this evening. For a moment, it all felt normal, or at least as normal as everything could feel now. And then, there was another clattering, and the door slammed open on its squeaky hinges. 

“Did you want to alert the RA?” Francis hissed, only to see the grayish cast on Richard’s face. 

Richard wiped his mouth, stained a dark purple. His cuffs were the same color. and, Francis realized, so were his socks. 

“Wine,” Richard said simply. 

Francis couldn’t tell if he sounded more horrified or elated. 

“Wine?” 

“Everywhere in the hall, and in the kitchen. Oozing out of the walls like blood.” 

“Are you sure you’re not just magic-drunk? Because I’m magic-drunk and actually drunk. And that can cause hallucinations. Once, Henry-” Francis trailed off, realizing that he was babbling. 

Richard shook his head. 

“No,” he said. “I’d know if I was magic-drunk, and I don’t hallucinate when I’m really drunk. This was something else. It felt ancient. Unreal, but also realer than anything I’ve ever felt before.” 

Francis thought of fire and snakes and twisting vines, of frosty stars dimmed by divine brilliance. 

“Are you sure it wasn’t an illusion?” he asked, hopeful and desperate. 

“You don’t mop illusions off the hallway floor” 

“Sometimes you can, with towels. Or did you use a spell? You’d need a different spell for a real mess.” 

“I used a spell. It was definitely wine. Suddenly it was just everywhere. Oozing from the walls, getting in my mouth. Did we do something?” 

“It’s Him,” Francis whispered. “From the Bacchanal.” 

What did you _call _at the Bacchanal, if it’s making my walls ooze months after the fact? Gods don’t stick around like this. They breeze in and out as they please if they don’t have a human host.” 

“I’m not sure I believe Julian about that anymore,” Francis said. 

He wanted to clamp a hand over his mouth, to push back in the doubt in Julian. But Henry wasn’t here, and Richard had no god to channel his magic through, was still a half-formed magician. He’d never really been one of them. It was safe for Francis to vomit all his fears out into the open with Richard, who didn’t really know Julian, who was only bound to the others through murder and a shared major. Richard was, in some ways, no more than a receptacle. A receptacle for emotions, for fears, for doubts. He would listen, because he yearned to be a part of something, and Francis was glad to satisfy that yearning for just a few moments more. 

“This is Dionysus. The mad god. He does what he wants. You’ve read the _Bacchae_. He infects people with his madness, and they don’t get out of it until they do what he requires of them. We summoned a god, and he didn’t bind himself to anyone’s magic as a channel.” 

Francis buried his head in his hands. They’d murdered and sacrificed and thrown their own magic into confusion, and for what? To be drowned in wine? He felt for the ache where his god had been, and found the space seemed smaller somehow. A horrible thought occurred to him, and it must have occurred to Richard as well. 

“The god is here. And we must have somehow bound him to all of us, or he wouldn’t have stayed.” 

“So how do we banish the god? Without, you know, banishing your magic all over again?” Richard asked. 

“Well, we can’t go to Julian, can we? ‘As your students, we took the liberty of trying to increase Henry’s powers and summoned a god in order to do a double binding. But it backfired, and now we’ve somehow managed to bind Dionysus to our entire class, Bunny not included. Oh, and we tried to sacrifice Bunny, because murder got us in this mess in the first place. So, o great teacher, please tell us what to do before we all drown in the wine that’s been oozing out of our walls, or until Richard gets kicked out of the dorms because all the wiring turns into ivy whenever he’s around.’ Has that happened? The ivy, I mean.” 

“Not to my knowledge, no.” 

“I should ask Charles if anything like that has happened to him,” Francis said. 

“You should sleep,” Richard countered. “You look exhausted. And you’re drunk.” 

Francis laughs. 

“You’re drunk too.” 

“Probably half the dorm’s drunk, if there’s wine coming out of the walls. If it’s showing up anywhere else on campus, Cloke Rayburn can start a slightly more legitimate side business selling cheap wine.” 

“Dubious cheap wine of supernatural provenance. Guaranteed to get you through all of your practical magic finals. Thank god we’re classics majors and don’t have to do that.” 

Richard laughed at that, like he was desperate for mirth and merriment, to stave away the doom coalescing around them. _He’s resorting to pracmaj jokes_, Francis thought, _because he’s drunk. And probably sneering at himself the way we used to sneer at him. The way I used to sneer. _

He’s suddenly ashamed, and the room feels tight and unfriendly, squeezing in with all its mustiness and flickering light. The shards of the broken glass from earlier lie like ice on the floor, and he thought of the early spring sky outside, likely bright and cold as the sky before the Bacchanal, before everything went to shit. 

Francis wanted to run outside, to scream into the darkness, to scare the god or bring him into himself, but mostly, he just wanted a way to escape this new nightmare. What was to prevent his life from becoming an adult’s version of a Swiss boarding school for boys and girls who didn’t use their magic as their families thought they should were sent? What was to keep him tethered to the world when his own god was gone, and Dionysus stalked his footsteps, demanding sacrifice. He turned to Richard again, and Richard seemed to know what he wanted now and was obliging. Or, Francis thought, perhaps he was afraid of the darkness too, and wanted to touch skin to skin. 

They were eager together, clumsy with spell-drunkenness, fumbling and nervous as clothes were tossed aside, as Francis misused a spell in an attempt to fold things and only managed to shatter Richard’s ugly desk lamp, and then, trying to fix it, to turn the fragments into ice that melted away on the floor. But it was good to be touching someone, someone who wasn’t Charles, who likely wouldn’t claim to have forgotten everything in the morning. 

***

Sometime before dawn, but well after two (the desk-clock still worked, despite the reckless use of magic earlier), Richard woke up from unquiet dreams. He pushed Francis’s arm off his shoulder, and pulled himself from bed to stand in the faint, shallow moonlight at the window. Outside, the lawn was blue-black in the darkness, mottled in places with unmelted patches of dirty white snow, and deserted save for a single drunk girl wobbling home from a late-running party, singing faintly and off-key. 

But there was something sinister in the darkness, Richard thought. He felt watched, though that was clearly impossible. The drunk girl was heading to a different dorm. Francis was still snoring softly in his bed, and Richard felt a strong desire to return to that warmth, the feeling of relative safety one got from touch. He placed his hand pensively on the windowsill. 

The ivy on the outside of the dorm, withered by the winter cold, tapped against the window in a light breeze, suddenly vibrant green. And when Richard raised his hand from the sill, it left a purple stain behind, an alcoholic smell hanging in the air. 

**Author's Note:**

> I had a great deal of fun with your prompts, and with writing a "just add magic" AU for this particular book. Hope you enjoy!  
Title is from Constantine P. Cavafy's "The God Abandons Antony".


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